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In Memoriam

Ezra Greenspan, M.D.: Pioneer of Medical Oncology

Director, Medical Oncology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York

Ezra Greenspan, a pioneer of medical oncology, especially in the realm of combination chemotherapy for solid tumors, died at his home in New York City on September 3, 2004. He was 85 years old and had suffered for some time from crippling osteoporosis. In spite of his disability, he had attended a breast cancer session in his honor, entitled Adjuvant Therapy: Trailblazers and Milestones, during The Chemotherapy Foundation’s twenty-first annual symposium in 2003, featuring talks by Bernard Fisher, James Holland, Luca Gianni (speaking for Gianni Bonadonna), Larry Norton, and Saul Rivkin. Beyond his landmark achievements, one of his salient personal features was that he sought to transmit, on every possible occasion, an optimistic attitude toward patient care with all the strength of his convictions, and he challenged existing dogma when it conflicted with his vast personal experience.

Ezra Greenspan was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1919, the eldest child of a marriage of recent Polish and Russian-Jewish immigrants finding a haven in the U.S. from the cruel pogroms taking place in their native lands. As others who were growing up in an age when vulnerability to infections was common, he experienced the pain of premature deaths among friends and family. The death from pneumonia of a college friend at Cornell University—while he escaped a similar fate with the help of a local physician who gave him a new drug, Prontosil^® (sulfamidochrysoidine, the first sulfa drug)—in the college infirmary, made a lasting impression, pointing him toward a career in medicine and, ultimately, to an unswerving focus on the promise and power of chemotherapy. Accordingly, from 1938–1942, he attended New York University School of Medicine and engaged in clinical research at Bellevue Hospital. An elective at Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases (now Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) with Lloyd Craver led him to an interest in Kaposi’s sarcoma. While attending a conference, he recognized the possibility that the patient being presented was suffering with visceral manifestations of this disease—a feat never before accomplished prior to autopsy. Subsequently, Greenspan was accepted into the prestigious House Staff training program at Mount Sinai Hospital because of this impressive clinical acumen. Under the tutelage of the renowned Isidore Snapper, Chief of the Second Medical Service and Director of Medical Education, Greenspan mastered the skills of interaction with patients and was encouraged to start a research career.

Ezra Greenspan, M.D., 1919–2004

For Ezra Greenspan, each patient with advanced cancer provided him with the challenge of bringing the latest of scientific advances to his or her treatment—just as the physician who saved his life as an undergraduate had done. During the postwar era, after completion of his training in internal medicine, he headed the inaugural Tumor Service at Walter Reed, where he introduced the recently tested nitrogen mustard, appropriately interwoven with radiation (the first "combined modality" efforts), into the treatment of his young patients with lymphomas and germ cell tumors. Completing his military service, he was given the opportunity to join the Public Health Service and lead the first clinical and experimental chemotherapy unit of the National Cancer Institute. In 1952, he opted to return to New York and Mount Sinai, eager to continue laboratory research on serum biomarkers in relation to treatment and to apply the principles of combination chemotherapy that he had helped forge to the care of his patients. He soon after had his expectations confirmed with the application of thiotepa plus methotrexate in women with metastatic breast and ovarian cancers.

To facilitate the training of the next generation of clinical oncologists and to strengthen the environment of clinical research, he established The Chemotherapy Foundation in 1968 in order to provide support for promising cancer research programs. He served as its Chairman and Medical Director for over three decades. In 1972, he launched the oncology educational program now known as the Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium on Innovative Cancer Therapy for Tomorrow. The widely attended Greenspan Meeting has become a major annual forum for the presentation of therapeutic advances to oncologists and hematologists from the U.S. and abroad. His legacy continues thanks to the capable staff he trained and to the colleagues he inspired. At the 2004 symposium, in front of another record-setting audience, his friends and colleagues recalled, in a video entitled All About Ezra, the force of his personality and the legacy of his accomplishments. It was a fitting tribute to this pioneer of medical oncology.

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